Studies in self-questioning designed to improve students' prose processing are reviewed in the context of three theoretical perspectives: active processing perspective, metacognitive theory, and schema theory. The effects of self-questioning training on students' prose processing seem successful. Constraints of content knowledge and metacognitive…

Concludes that teaching fourth- and fifth-grade children to ask themselves questions about key points in a story significantly improved their performance on tests about story content. (FL)

Describes a procedure termed free associational assessment that uses free recall and associational thinking. A sample lesson is provided. (HOD)

Elucidates the reading problems of nonnative English speakers, noting reasons for the problems, giving signs of the problems, and demonstrating results of the problems. (HOD)

Describes cultural bias at four levels: lexico-syntactic, content and concepts, social and cognitive, and schematic or frame of reference. A study is described which provides examples of cultural bias in reading comprehension items because of a mismatch between the culture of the test item and that of the test taker.

Using sixth-grade students, a study examines (1) relationships between background knowledge and passage comprehension, (2) relative usefulness of certain variations in measuring available knowledge, (3) value of a background measure as applied to a teacher-directed small group prereading language and concept organizer activity, and (4) effect of a…

Points out, by citing a recently completed longitudinal study at the University of Iowa, that children are more likely to discover how reading works and make it work for them if the book is not too hard. (EL)

Reports on a study that investigated which of four modes of reading (oral reading to an audience, oral reading to oneself, silent reading, silent reading while listening) best facilitates fifth-grade students' comprehension. Concludes that for these students as a whole, comparable comprehension may be expected when they read to themselves or read…

Indicates that students who received organizational instruction wrote better summaries than did students who received traditional instruction. (FL)

Describes two programs that involved teachers using closed-captioned television materials to develop skills in the areas of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and oral reading fluency with hearing, remedial readers. (FL)

Studies how children negotiate the meaning of literature by examining how they responded when given the opportunity to retell a story directly after hearing it. (DF)

Describes how textbook activity guides that emphasize active student involvement through cooperative learning and a self monitoring component can help students become active, flexible, more effective readers of textbook materials. (HOD)

Reports a study designed to answer the question of whether English as a second language (ESL) reading can be facilitated by explicit teaching of text structure. Results indicate that training on the top-level rhetorical organization of expository texts significantly increased the amount of information that 25 intermediate-level ESL students could…

Current theory and research into the oral-written relationship are reviewed. Three models of reading comprehension based on oral-written language skills are reviewed as representative and their implications for reading instruction in grades 4-12 and in bilingual-bicultural classrooms are determined. The mingling of oral and literate strategies, in…

Reports on research showing that the use of a process-oriented writing program did not improve students' reading ability. (DF)